Void Helix

Five damage and five life for six mana is a rate no efficiency-minded burn spell would tolerate, and the inefficiency is the point: this is a spell built for high life totals and long games, where a straight damage-for-mana exchange stops being the metric that matters. The template is black's version of point-and-shoot creature-or-player burn, but the drain half reframes the whole thing. A plain damage spell asks whether the target is worth the card; bolting a fixed five-point lifegain onto it makes the spell do work even when there is nothing urgent to kill. Burning a threat and gaining five is one line; simply banking five life against an aggressive board is another, and that flexibility is what lets black reach outside its usual removal wheelhouse to deal noncombat damage to anything at all. The "any target" clause is what earns the color-pie stretch: black rarely gets to point damage at creatures and players alike, and welding it to the drain keeps the effect inside black's life-swing identity rather than simply poaching red's job. Instant speed is the last piece. It can sit up during combat or an opponent's end step and function as both a combat trick against a lethal attacker and a reactive answer to a freshly resolved threat, with the life gain quietly repaying the tempo you spent holding it open.