the Fates have spoken

In the oldest of the Greek stories there were three sisters, older than the gods themselves, who sat apart from the world and decided the destiny of every living thing. They were the Fates, and even Zeus, king of all the gods, could not undo what they had settled.

The first sister, Clotho, held a spindle and spun the thread of a human life, drawing it out from nothing at the moment of birth. The second, Lachesis, measured the thread with her rod, deciding how long that life would run and what would befall it along the way. And the third, Atropos — the one whose name meant unturnable — held the shears.

When Atropos raised her shears and cut the thread, that life was over, and no prayer, no bribe, no act of heroism could join it back together again. What the three sisters spun and measured and cut was final. Their word was the one law that bound gods and mortals alike, spoken once and never taken back.

Kings might rage against their pronouncements and heroes might struggle against them, but the struggling only led them, step by step, straight into the very fate that had been decreed. Once the sisters had spoken, the matter was closed, sealed as tightly as the grave.

So when we say the Fates have spoken, we mean a decision has come down that no argument can reverse — the thing is settled, final, and beyond all appeal, as though destiny itself had ruled.