Verrak, Warped Sengir

Life payment usually functions as a brake: the counterweight to a strong activated ability is the chunk it drains from your total, so you feel every use. This inverts that logic. The life you pay becomes a trigger, and paying it a second time forks the ability with fresh targets. The construction is narrow by design, because the copy clause fires only when life was paid as part of the activation cost, and never on mana abilities. That excludes most of the game's activated toolbox (tap effects, mana filters, anything you feed with lands or rocks) and points instead at the small set of activated abilities whose printed cost is life itself: Razaketh, the Foulblooded tutoring at two life a pop, Griselbrand paying seven to draw seven, fetch lands like Marsh Flats cracking for one life, life-fueled sacrifice and pump outlets. Note the boundary: this cares about abilities you activate, not alternative casting costs paid in life, so a spell cast off the top of your library by paying life is untouched. Against the abilities it does catch, the doubling is optional and pay-as-you-go, so it never becomes a mana sink you have to keep fed; you decide per activation whether the copy is worth another bite out of your total. The body is not incidental to the engine: flying, deathtouch, and lifelink hand back a slice of the life the engine spends while keeping the 2/2 relevant. This scales precisely with how far you commit to treating life as a currency to be spent rather than a total to be hoarded.