Searing Flesh

Seven damage that refuses to look at a creature is the entire pitch: this is a haymaker for ending a game from across the table, not a removal spell wearing a finisher's hat. The number does all the talking. Seven is a third of a twenty-life total in a single card, no board state required, no setup beyond surviving long enough to fire it. By declining the three-damage flexibility most red sorcery burn trades on, it skips the usual tension (is the option to kill a creature worth a lower ceiling?) and commits entirely to reach. That places it in the lineage of top-heavy direct-damage closers, the cards a controlling or ramping red deck holds back until the opponent slips into burn range, then spends to delete the last few combat steps from the math. The price is the toll for that guarantee: at this cost it is never an early tempo play and never wants to be, because efficient red removal does not want to be doing this work in the first place. The clause that lets it hit a planeswalker keeps it from dead-ending against an opponent who tries to stabilize behind a defensive walker rather than blockers, denying them the trick of parking life-total pressure on a permanent the burn cannot reach. A blunt instrument by design, built so a deck with no creatures and no combat plan can still walk an opponent to zero.