It's also just possible that Belkar will die before the climax of the story and that, in a moment of profound character growth (or at least growth in the field of "team spirit"), Roy will decide to bring Belkar back, out of a mixture of pragmatism and team solidarity, and perhaps partly because he expects Belkar to die permanently anyway before the end of the year.

Then Belkar dies for good in the final battle, but the prior death and resurrection will have acted as a nice twist.