Sarcomancy

Spend a single black mana and a 2/2 black Zombie walks onto the battlefield the moment the enchantment resolves: that body is the entire payoff, and it beats nearly every comparable one-drop of its era. The catch is folded into the card rather than priced into the rate. The upkeep clause is the meter running on that loan. So long as a Zombie sits on the battlefield (any Zombie, not just the one this made) the enchantment is inert, a free creature you forgot you paid for. Lose the last Zombie and it starts pinging you, slow but inevitable, a chip of self-damage every turn until you replace one or find a way to remove the enchantment. The design discipline here is elegant in a way black built its whole identity on: the power is real and the discount is real, but the card never lets you forget you borrowed against your own life total to get it. It is the same bargain logic that runs through Dark Ritual and the painlands, expressed as an ongoing tax. Built for a Zombie-tribal shell where the trigger almost never bites, it makes its loan look free precisely because the deck keeps Zombies on the table by default; pull the card out of that shell and the upkeep clause is the lender knocking, one point at a time.