Psychro Killer: Chapter 14 - Lost

Niko had wandered for what felt like an eternity. The weeks blurred together—village after village, door after door slammed in his face, scowls and whispers chasing him wherever he went. “Vassilis’ son,” they’d say, as if it were a curse. At first, he had tried to explain, to plead with them, but no one wanted to listen. And now, after months of relentless searching, he had nothing left.

His shoes were worn through, soles cracked and peeling like the remains of some forgotten relic. He’d stuffed them with rags scavenged from bins—an indignity that even stray dogs didn’t seem to endure—just to keep the sharp stones from slicing his feet. The irony wasn’t lost on him: once, his shoes had tapped on marble floors, a conductor’s step echoing in grand theatres. Now, each step felt like a punchline to a joke no one was laughing at.

His clothes hung loose, his frame scrawny and weathered, dirt caked under his nails. He caught a glimpse of himself in a shop window once—just a fleeting glance—and almost didn’t recognize the stranger staring back. What had happened to him? This wasn’t Niko Angelopoulos, opera maestro, rising star in London’s high society. This was... something else. A parody of himself, perhaps.

Days blurred together, a slow, dragging procession of hunger and dirt. He had long since stopped counting how many meals he’d skipped. Food, real food, had become an abstract concept, a memory from a past life. Now, he fished in bins behind tavernas for scraps that even the dogs ignored. He almost admired their standards.

That Niko? He scoffed, his lips dry and cracked. The one who wore tailored suits and gave interviews? No. That Niko was a myth now, just another one of those stories people whispered about in Psychro. Maybe he never existed in the first place.

He wandered without aim most days, drifting through the landscape like a ghost. Or a fool. He wasn’t sure which anymore. He’d considered crawling back to Yannis more than once, or better yet, scraping together enough dignity to beg for a boat ride back to London. But no, the thought of London... that was truly laughable. What was there for him now? A life he could no longer bear? No. The truth prodded him like an itch he couldn’t scratch. Somewhere deep inside, he knew his father wasn’t the monster everyone thought he was. Not a killer. He couldn’t be.

But what did he really know? Each day he spent searching, another piece of that certainty crumbled. Every village, every dead-end, every shut door chipped away at him. Most people didn’t even bother to look him in the eye anymore. They just closed their shutters and bolted their doors when they saw him coming. He wasn’t just an outcast. He was cursed. The son of a cursed man.

Like father, like son, he thought bitterly, as children jeered from a distance. Sometimes, they threw stones. He didn’t blame them. They’d been taught well.

The rains were a rare blessing. He’d learned to track them, to wait by old stone troughs where water from the mountains collected. When the sky opened, he drank like a dog, slurping up the precious rainwater, not caring who saw.

Survival, Niko, he reminded himself. One more day. Just survive.

But the truth... that elusive, fickle thing... it always danced just beyond his reach. He’d knocked on doors, repeated the same questions like some demented oracle, and all he got were the same results: disgust, disbelief, rejection. If anyone threw him a scrap of bread, it was more out of superstition than charity. They all knew who he was, and to them, he was no better than his father—just another man ruined by his own madness. He could almost hear them whispering, The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Each time he opened his mouth to ask again, he felt the hopelessness gnawing at him. The villagers’ eyes told him everything. They had no answers.

He was losing hope.

And then... Lysandra appeared.

She came to him like an apparition, her form vague and almost spectral in the pale light of dusk. He had found a small corner near the village of Agios Nikolaos, trying to warm himself against a crumbling stone wall when she approached. At first, he thought she was another villager come to tell him to leave, but her voice was calm, detached, almost knowing.

“I heard what you did,” she said, her words cutting through the stillness. Niko looked up, unsure if he was hallucinating again.

“You know the truth?” His voice was little more than a rasp, desperate.

Lysandra was quiet for a moment, her gaze unreadable. “There is someone. A woman. She knows more than anyone. But she keeps to herself.”

“Who?” Niko’s hands gripped the edge of the stone, his knuckles white with anticipation. He could feel it—this was the closest he had come to an answer.

“Hestia,” Lysandra said slowly. “She lives simply, with her son, about five kilometres from here.”

“Hestia…?” Niko repeated, tasting the name. It was unfamiliar, but it held weight, as though it carried the key to everything.

Lysandra nodded, her expression softening slightly. “Yes. If you want the truth, she’s the one you should seek out. But…” She hesitated.

“But what?” Niko pressed, his heart racing.

Lysandra’s eyes flickered, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “Be prepared for what you’ll find.”

Without waiting for his response, she turned and disappeared into the twilight, leaving Niko alone once more with only the growing sense that the final act of this wretched play was about to unfold.

The name echoed in his mind—Hestia—and with it, a flicker of hope that maybe, just maybe, the truth was within reach. He had no choice now but to find her, to confront whatever she had kept hidden all these years.