Soot Imp

A symmetrical tax that isn't actually symmetrical: in a deck committed entirely to black, the life drain it hands out is one-sided punishment, since you simply never feed it. The design inverts the usual splashing incentive. Where most cards reward reaching outside your color, this one builds a wall of attrition around mono-color discipline, bleeding any opponent (or any greedy pilot) whose spells stray off black. The 1/2 flyer is almost incidental, a body to carry a trigger that fires on what players are doing rather than on anything sitting in play. The clever part is that the trigger keys on casting, not on resolution: a counterspell, a removal spell, a cantrip, every nonblack card costs its caster a point the moment it's declared, whether it resolves or gets answered later. That turns the Imp into a soft clock measured in an opponent's own deck diversity, every off-color spell on their curve quietly billing them. It is color-pie evangelism in creature form, the kind of card that argues mono-black should be rewarded for staying pure rather than treated as a deckbuilding constraint to apologize for.