The descent into Tartarus was less a journey and more an unraveling.
Zeus did not walk down gleaming steps or ride a chariot into the depths. He simply stood at the mouth of the chasm, a jagged tear in the world behind the throne room that few knew of and fewer still dared approach. He took one last look at the fading twilight over Olympus. The colors were already dimmer, the air thinner. Metis had begun her work.
Then, he stepped off the edge.
He did not fall. The world fell away from him. The light of the upper realms vanished, swallowed by a gloom that was older than darkness. He passed through layers of reality—the bustling mortal world, the quiet fields of Elysium, the mournful banks of the Asphodel Meadows, then the shrieking torment of Tartarus proper. He ignored it all, a stone sinking through troubled water, aiming for the very bottom.
