Clotho

Clotho was the youngest of the three Sisters of Fate, the spinner of the threads of life who decided who would be born and when. Set apart from her sisters Lahkesis and Atropos by her gravity and her sense of order, she guarded the Loom Chamber of the Palace of the Fates until Kratos came to seize the threads and remake his own fate. (God of War II)

The spinner of life#

Clotho was the youngest of the three Sisters of Fate and the spinner of the threads, often called the threads of life. She began each life and chose who would be born and when, and through her threads all living things came into the world. In Hesiod's account the Fates are daughters of Nyx, the night. In the games she and her sisters made their home on the Island of Creation, the birthplace of the Titans, and stayed on as its rulers after the Titans left to reign over the wider world. (God of War II; Theogony)

When Cronos learned from his mother Gaia that he would one day be overthrown by his own children, he sought the favor of the Fates and gifted Clotho and her sisters the Steeds of Time, the great beasts that pulled their island back from the edge of the world. The gift bought him nothing. The sisters left his destiny as it was, and the gods overthrew the Titans as foretold. (God of War II)

The Steeds of Time and Kratos#

Ages later, after Zeus betrayed and killed Kratos, the Titan Gaia told the Spartan that only the Sisters of Fate could let him change what had happened. He crossed to the Island of Creation, freed the Steeds of Time to bridge the way to the Palace of the Fates, and fought his way inside. (God of War II)

The Loom Chamber#

When Kratos came to the Palace of the Fates to change his fate, Clotho sensed his approach and warned her sisters. After he had trapped Lahkesis and Atropos within a mirror, the Spartan descended to the Loom Chamber where Clotho resided. She warned him to turn back, telling him that all life was born through the threads she spun and that to tamper with them was to destroy everything. Unlike her sisters, she offered Kratos the chance to relent. (God of War II)

Kratos defied her, and Clotho summoned cyclopes, minotaurs, sirens, and gorgons to bar his way. When these failed she took the fight into her own hands, lashing out with her many arms across every level of her apparatus, but Kratos subdued each limb in turn. At the last she faced him at the top of the chamber, and after she dealt the Spartan heavy harm he disabled her arms and met her end by impaling her skull on a great swinging, blade-like pendulum drawn from her own machinery. So Clotho became the only Sister of Fate to be physically killed, while Lahkesis and Atropos remained alive but trapped in the past. Even after her death her consciousness lingered, and as Kratos used the threads to travel back in time her disembodied voice taunted him that he would never find his own thread. (God of War II)

Nature and bearing#

Clotho took her role as the creator of life with utter seriousness, unlike her sisters, who toyed with the destinies of mortals. She believed fate absolute and her own judgments beyond question, and held mortals, even demigods, powerless against her will. Yet she alone among the three showed a measure of care for the consequences of changing the course of events, and alone offered Kratos the mercy of turning back before the end. In form she was the largest of the sisters and the youngest, resembling a vast silkworm with scaled, heavy skin, two sets of arms, and long white hair beneath a crown set with blue silver. (God of War II)