Vraska's Contempt

Exile is the whole pitch here. Black has always had cheap, efficient destruction, but killing a creature leaves a body in the graveyard for recursion, and killing a planeswalker still lets it resolve any death-adjacent value on the way out. Paying double-black at four mana buys the clause that closes those doors: the creature does not come back, the indestructible threat goes away regardless of whether destruction would have touched it, the recurring nuisance stays gone. The two extra life reads like a footnote and plays like more, because the permanents black tends to aim this at (aggressive curve-toppers, planeswalkers ticking up advantage) are the ones eating your life total in the first place. Pairing exile with a lifegain rider on a single instant lets the card do the two things black removal historically split across separate answers: remove a permanent that would otherwise fight on from the yard, and claw back a chunk of the clock it already put on the board. The cost is the honest part of the bargain. Four mana plus a strict double-black requirement keeps it off the early curve, so it can never be the reactive answer to a turn-two threat; it is built to stabilize and trade in the midgame. That places it among black's "kill the important thing" instants priced as a fair exchange, with the distinction that whatever it catches is removed from the game rather than merely sent to the graveyard.