Spinal Embrace

Most theft spells trade permanence for surprise: Mind Control holds a creature forever but telegraphs itself a turn early, while Threaten grabs one for a single attack and hands it back. This bends the Threaten template into something closer to removal with a body, and the combat-only restriction is the load-bearing constraint. It can only be cast during a combat phase, yours or theirs, which makes it equally a defensive trick that swipes an attacker mid-swing and an offensive one that steals a fresh blocker and crashes in with it, since the stolen creature untaps and gains haste either way. Whichever side of combat you fire it on, the creature is sacrificed once that turn winds down, paying you its toughness in life. The result is a one-card answer that consumes their threat permanently rather than borrowing it: the built-in sacrifice clause forecloses the loophole that leaves a Threaten caster staring down their own loaner next turn, folding the cleanup into the spell. The toughness-based lifegain rewards stealing a wall or a fat ground-stalled creature, the exact bodies most worth the swing, and keeps the payoff tied to taking something durable rather than something cheap. Three colored pips across two colors price it as a blue-black control deck's safety valve rather than a tempo play: the timing window is the only gate, but the gate is real, since the creature you covet has to still be on the battlefield when a combat phase rolls around.