Khenra Eternal

Afflict is the keyword that quietly rewrites what a small aggressive body means on the attacking side. The whole point of a cheap beater is that a competent blocker neutralizes it for free: trade away the chump, the damage stops. This Khenra refuses that bargain. Block it and you lose a life regardless of what happens to the creature afterward, so combat is no longer a clean answer. The toll lands on the block trigger itself, before damage, which means it collects even when a bigger creature eats the attacker and even when the defender would rather not pay. That changes the calculus on the defender's side, not the attacker's: you can still kill it in the block, but you cannot kill it for nothing. The number is modest (one life per swing), which keeps the exchange fair. This is the floor of the mechanic, a common-rarity expression of the idea rather than a bomb built around it. The Zombie Jackal Warrior typing marks it as a recurring undead echo of a more fragile original, the kind of replaceable attrition piece an aggressive deck wants in volume rather than as a single threat. As a design, it demonstrates how one keyword can shift combat math without touching power, toughness, or cost: the pressure is not the body, it is the price the defender pays to remove the body.