Puncture Bolt

The trick to pairing a single point of damage with a permanent counter is that the two halves answer different toughness brackets, and one of them never wears off. Against a one-toughness creature the counter is wasted: the point of damage already kills, so the spell behaves like ordinary burn. Against a two-toughness creature the halves combine to get there where neither would alone. And against anything larger, the counter is the lasting work, not the burn: the point of damage fades when the turn ends, leaving exactly one permanent notch of shrinkage on whatever survives. That asymmetry is the whole appeal. The card reads like a small shock when the math lines up to a kill and like a slow debuff when it does not, and the instant-speed window lets it function as a combat trick that permanently drops an attacker's power below the threshold you need, then keeps that creature one step smaller going forward. The obvious ceiling is that three-toughness creatures only get bruised, which leaves the question half-answered against the bodies that matter most on a developed board. This is red removal more interested in marking a creature down than in throwing damage at faces, where the durable counter, not the immediate point of damage, is the part you are actually buying.