Priest of the Blood Rite
A 5/5 flier for five mana is a fair rate on its own; here it arrives with a spare 2/2 body attached and an invoice stapled to it. The Priest bleeds you two life every upkeep while it survives, which flips the usual instinct about creatures: normally you want the body to stick, but once the Demon is on the table the Cleric becomes a liability you would rather see die. The token is what you bought; the 2/2 is the meter still ticking. That's the whole design. Sacrifice outlets and chump blocks turn the drawback into an off switch, since killing your own Priest stops the bleed while the flier keeps flying, and an aggressive deck that has already spent the life total can afford to run a few extra turns of upkeep tax. Left alone against a slower opponent, the clock eventually points the wrong way, and that self-correcting clause is exactly what lets the front-loaded power be this large. It belongs to a long line of black creatures that lease oversized stats against a recurring life cost, the color's oldest bargain: the muscle shows up first, and the bill comes due on a schedule you cannot skip.
