Belia: The Ruler Who Is Also Serving a Sentence

Belia: The Ruler Who Is Also Serving a Sentence Belia has a pretty good introduction in the original Inferno. Mercy has fought her way through a place where almost everything wants to hurt her, and the woman overseeing it offers her a drink. Then she introduces herself as Satan, lets that sit for a moment, and explains that it isn't quite what Mercy thinks. Her name is Belia. She says she isn't Lucifer or the source of all evil. Satan is a name that stuck over the centuries. And the part I find more interesting than the joke is that she says she was sentenced to this place too. The woman running the Inferno is also somebody being punished there. Spoilers for the original Inferno #1–5. She gives Mercy an explanation for how she ended up there. According to Belia, she was once a favored angel. She became jealous of what humans were given, especially life and free will, and questioned God. Her punishment was banishment. Now she's overseeing the realm while hoping that her own penance will eventually end. That's Belia's account inside this fictional universe. It isn't a statement about what happens to people after death in the real world, and I wouldn't treat her version of the rules as a universal religious answer either. The interesting part of the scene is what those beliefs make her willing, and unwilling, to do. Mercy has arrived looking for a way out with her sister Grace and the man Sela sent her to retrieve. Belia can authorize an exit, but she says overseeing the place isn't the same as making its rules. She accepts that Mercy and the man should be able to leave. Grace is the problem. Belia says the circumstances of Grace's death prevent her release. Mercy doesn't accept that as the end of the conversation. And given everything she's just gone through to reach her sister, I don't blame her. She's finally standing in front of someone with authority, only to be told that authority comes with a line she won't cross. Trying to force her doesn't solve it. Belia catches Mercy's knife hand, energy crackles around the contact, and she throws Mercy away. That gives us something concrete about her capabilities without needing to invent an entire list of angelic powers. Mercy is dangerous and experienced, but she can't intimidate Belia into agreeing. Belia has enough physical and supernatural control in that encounter to stop her. What she doesn't have is freedom from fear. When Mercy offers to remain in Grace's place, Belia worries about what breaking the rules could mean for her own chance of redemption. That changes the conversation. Until then, she's the person who seems able to decide everyone else's future. Now we see that she thinks someone else is deciding hers. She can run this place and still be afraid of making the decision that keeps her there forever. Mercy reaches her by arguing that helping Sela's struggle on Earth might be a way for both of them to earn redemption. Belia agrees. Grace leaves, Mercy stays, and Belia makes it clear that she has ideas about what comes next. The ending returns Mercy to Earth as a killer with glowing red eyes, leading into the Soul Collector story. Her sister's freedom has come with an obligation, not a clean release for Mercy. ## Where the science comparison stops With Belia, the most important abilities aren't something I can meaningfully explain through muscle or anatomy. Wings and horns are visible features. Her ability to oversee souls, enforce the conditions of an afterlife and make this bargain belongs to the setting's supernatural rules. The pages don't give us an experiment, a physical mechanism or a measurable energy source for any of that. Even the brief energy effect when she stops Mercy only establishes what happens in that confrontation. It doesn't establish that she can do anything she wants, or that every restriction she talks about is something she could casually erase. In fact, the scene spends more time on what she believes she cannot do than on displaying her strength. I think that makes her more interesting than simply treating her as the final monster Mercy has to beat. Mercy gets through to her by recognizing that Belia wants something too. She wants the possibility of forgiveness. She wants her sentence to end. Once Mercy gives her a reason to believe helping someone else could move her toward that, she makes a different choice. The bargain isn't entirely generous, and the final pages make sure we don't forget that. Belia gets Mercy. But she also lets Grace go when her first answer was no. For a character introduced under the name Satan, her most revealing scene isn't the moment she overpowers someone. It's the moment a woman standing in front of her asks for a chance, and she has to decide whether the hope she keeps for herself can extend to somebody else.