Perilous Predicament

The structural cost of any sacrifice effect is that the opponent picks which permanent dies, and this design pays for five mana by demanding two of those choices at once: an artifact creature and a nonartifact creature, chosen separately, from each opponent. That partitioning is the entire idea. A single edict like Diabolic Edict lets an opponent feed the worst thing they own; splitting the demand into two creature categories forces a loss from each pile, so a board holding one real artifact threat and one real flesh threat gives up both rather than the cheaper of the two. Against a board missing a category, the effect narrows to a plain edict on the remaining half: a deck running no artifact creatures surrenders only a nonartifact creature, and the artifact clause finds nothing. The instant-speed timing does more than the rate suggests, letting this answer a creature mid-combat or in response to a sacrifice outlet, picking off a key blocker or a planeswalker's protector after attacks are declared. This is an edict that scales with how artifact-dense the opposing battlefield is: brutal against the metalcraft and improvise builds this era of design ran alongside, and a slow, conditional removal spell against anyone playing flesh and blood.