Shriek of Dread

Granting fear at instant speed is a strange place to spend two mana, and the strangeness is the point: this is an evasion spell whose caveat is baked into the keyword itself. Fear slips a creature past anything that is not an artifact creature or a black creature, which in a black-heavy field is a meaningful asterisk rather than blanket unblockability. The card lives in the gap between a finisher and a trick. Cast it on a swollen attacker to push the last points through a clogged ground stall, or hold it open to ambush a damage race; either way you are buying one likely connection without committing a permanent. The catch is the fragility of the premise: you are spending a whole card to make a single creature land a single hit, so the math only works when that creature swings hard enough for connecting to decide something. Within black's evasion toolkit it sits below the spells that grant fear permanently, and below the Auras that do the same job without expiring at end of turn; an instant that lasts only until end of turn asks you to time it for the swing that matters and leaves you nothing the turn after. What it offers in exchange is the surprise of holding up mana: a creature that might suddenly become unblockable, and the freedom to leave the spell uncast when the board never demands it.