Pyrostatic Pillar

A tax aimed squarely at the bottom of the curve, and the threshold is doing precise work: three or less catches the cantrips, the one-mana tutors, the cheap interaction, the whole engine of a combo deck that wins by chaining small spells. Anything four or more sails through untouched, which is the tell about who this was built to punish. Where most pinger-style hate sits on a creature that can be killed or chumped, this lives on an enchantment with no body to attack, and it bills the caster directly rather than taxing the spell on the stack, so countering or fizzling the spell does not stop the damage from coming. It is symmetrical on paper, but the symmetry is a fiction: the deck that durdles with two-mana spells to assemble a kill bleeds itself out, while a deck full of three-power threats barely notices. That asymmetry is the design idea. The damage stacks per spell rather than per turn, so a storm-style sequence that fires off six cheap spells in a row queues up twelve damage in triggers before the payoff resolves, often more than the caster has to spare. The triggers do go on the stack like any other, so there is a window to respond, but the only real out is removing the enchantment before the triggers exist to stop future triggers, or stopping at fewer spells than the kill requires. It reads like incidental burn and functions as a clock with the opponent's own hand setting the pace.