Rhys, the Evermore

Persist normally lives welded to the creature that carries it, which is what makes handing it out as a temporary blessing so unusual. Flashing in at instant speed, Rhys turns another of your creatures into a single turn's worth of death insurance: block with it, sacrifice it, or walk it into removal, and it returns having traded a point of size for another life. That diminishing counter is the same governor persist was originally built around, the weight that stops a creature from dying and returning forever, and Rhys leans on it deliberately: the granted persist is a one-shot enters trigger that expires by cleanup, not an engine that rebuilds itself. Where the design earns a second look is the counter-scrubbing ability, which cleans the shrinkage off at sorcery speed so the recurred body does not carry that dent permanently. That same activation answers any counter riding on your own creatures: fade counters, vanishing counters, the age counters that pile onto cumulative-upkeep bodies, or the -1/-1s an opponent's effect leaves behind. It is strictly creature-only cleanup, so it will not touch counters sitting on noncreature permanents, but inside a deck that wants its own bodies to stay recurring and healthy, a two-mana Elf that both grants a save and later erases that save's cost is doing quiet, durable work.