Osseous Exhale

Combat-only removal has always been the discount aisle of white's answers: cheaper than unconditional destruction because it can only fire once creatures are committed to the attack or block. Five damage at instant speed to an attacker or blocker is a genuinely large number for two mana, enough to knock down most midrange threats and trade up against anything that swung in overconfident. The restriction is the whole payment: hold it, wait for the swing, and you punish the aggressor rather than answering a problem on your own terms. What sets it apart from the usual fight-or-die trick is behold, the mechanic that asks you to show a Dragon rather than spend one. The life gain rider is small (two life), but the design intent is sharper than the number suggests: revealing a card from hand satisfies the requirement just as fully as tapping nothing, so a top-heavy shell collects the bonus without paying anything real for it. That gives the effect a graceful floor. Beheld or not, it still deals its five and answers the creature; the Dragon-holder simply gets paid a little on top. It is clean conditional removal built to slot into a fliers deck without demanding the Dragon actually leave your hand, which is a subtler ask than most tribal payoffs and a more forgiving one.