#(bram is an exception here but asagiri pls seriously stop with those fakeouts!!! it destroys all suspension of disbelief!!!)

[dazais-guardian-angel]

BSD is ultimately a hopeful story, about characters healing and finding their reason to live, and a place to belong. Outside of exceptions in the light novels, this applies almost every character in the main manga who isn't some sort of main antagonist (and even then there are exceptions, like Francis). Bram has lived a tired and lonely life for a very long time, ever since he lost his entire kingdom and his daughter somehow, and the story has set up the fact that he hasn't had any desire to live, any vested interest in the world all this time with the loss of said daughter — until he met Aya, who explicitly reminds him of her. He feels genuine care for her and worry for her, and he wants to be her knight, and sees her as his princess; she is his new reason to keep living. Before knowing her, he might have been fine with giving in to Fyodor taking over his body, but that certainly won't be the case anymore. If he's still in there, he's going to keep fighting, to get back to Aya, his new daughter, and I fully expect it to happen. It only makes sense that it will, with the series' track record, and the message it wants to send.

I have a strong suspicion that the flashback with Fyodor in Bram's castle isn't over yet, and that in the upcoming chapter(s) we're going to find out that Fyodor was somehow responsible for Bram losing everything he held dear. If that's the case, it would make perfect sense why he would jump at the chance to kill Fyodor at the request of the ADA, and maybe even was willing to join the DoA in the first place in hopes that he could one day get his revenge (so he obviously must not have known how Fyodor's ability works, but I think his "I see" in his last moments when he felt something was him putting 2 and 2 together, realizing how Fyodor seemingly came back to life back then even though he was supposedly killed). And it would give him even more of a reason to want to fight to get his body back: to return to Aya, and to get vengeance on the rat who destroyed his life and separated him from his daughter twice.

Also think it's very important to remember that Aya is named after an author, even though she does not have an ability, and that abilities usually form after some sort of trauma. Irl Aya's history is vaguely similar to BSD's Aya's: she lost her mother and sister at a young age, and a reoccurring theme in her works, many of which are memoirs, are her feelings of inferiority as she was growing up in comparing herself to them and her aunts, brought about by her demanding father. None of the names really jump out at me (not that the book names ever have much to do with the abilities/characters aside from a few lol), except for the title of one of her memoirs, called "Father's Death". If Aya was ever going to awaken an ability, I can't think of a more appropriate time for it to happen than now. And if it does, it's likely that said ability will play a major role in taking Fyodor down, and bringing Bram back to her — after all, Jouno originally entrusted Aya with being Fukuchi's undoing precisely because he knew he would underestimate someone as unassuming and "weak" as a random little girl (and look where that led him!); why wouldn't that happen again with Fyodor underestimating her? He took her new father — her real father — away from her: he has absolutely no idea what kind of enemy he just made. Aya doesn't go down without a fight, she never gives up, she is a threat, and Fyodor isn't going to see that threat coming, because he underestimates the power of bonds and the power of "ordinary" people, just like Dazai talks about in Meursault. He made an enemy out of her, and he made an even stronger existing enemy out of Bram, and they will fight their hardest to get back to each other. Bram's return will be all the more satisfying and emotional after all he has to overcome to achieve it, and how much he's changed thanks to Aya's presence in his life. :')

so i know like nothing about character analysis but i'm almost 100% sure that bram is alive BECAUSE

he just got his body back, and it would be strange to set that up for such a long time and then to only use it for bram to kill fyodor

asagiri is a coward when it comes to killing characters

he keeps having these flashbacks when he's with aya to someone we assume is his daughter, and it makes zero sense for the manga to set something up with that only to discard it

bram is immortal: if fyodor dies in this body then chances are he's getting it back, as his ability can apparently revive the dead by infecting them with it (see akutagawa) and he's kinda infected with his own ability