Spectral Shepherd

The activated ability is the entire pitch, and it asks for a second color the cost never advertises. A 2/2 flier for three mana is replacement-level on its own; what the design reaches for is a blue splash that turns the Spirit into a bounce engine, picking up any Spirit you control (itself included) to rebuy enters-the-battlefield triggers or yank a creature out of a removal spell at instant speed. That gating is the cost-balance: the bounce is cheap, but it sits behind a blue pip the white half of a Spirit deck has no native reason to play, so the card only earns its slot in an Azorius shell built deliberately around recurring small fliers. There is a real trap built into the ability for the tokens that fill out those decks: bounce a Spirit token to hand and it ceases to exist as a state-based action, so the engine wants permanents with re-castable bodies and on-cast or enter triggers, not disposable creatures. The lineage it sits in is the on-board Spirit-tribal payoff, the repeatable bounce outlet that lets a deck weaponize re-entry value rather than spend cards on it, rewarding a wide board of cheap nonland Spirits over a single expensive one. Outside that frame it is an evasive body with a button it can rarely afford to press.