Shrieking Affliction

Black has spent its whole history trying to weaponize an empty hand, and most attempts fall into one of two camps: discard that strips the cards, or punishers that wait around for the opponent to run dry. This belongs squarely in the second camp, with a twist: it only matters once the target is down to one card or fewer, which means it pairs with hand attack the way a fuse pairs with the thing it's lit. Useless until the disruption has done its work, then suddenly worth three life every upkeep. The single-pip cost is the load-bearing detail. At one mana it commits almost nothing to the board and demands nothing from your own hand, so a deck can afford a critical mass of these effects, stacking redundant upkeep triggers until each turn cycle peels off life in chunks rather than points. Where a creature-based aggressor races on the battlefield and a burn deck races off the top, this races the opponent's hand size to zero, then keeps charging rent for as long as they stay there. It is a recurring tax an opponent can stop only by rebuilding the very resource everything around it is designed to deny them.