Ykhjuy

Looking for a word or phrase that embodies the feeling of "the struggle is about to begin". Can be a borrowed/loan word or phrase from another language (latin, french, etc). It should have the feeling of something is about to happen, something unpleasant that will be taxing on the individual.

Thanks in advance!

Fasten your seat belts

In the most famous line from the 1950 movie All About Eve, the character Margo Channing (played by Bette Davis) said

Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bump-y night!

"Night" is often replaced by the more sensible "ride".

As anyone who has been in a plane has experienced, a "Fasten Seat Belts" sign comes on when the pilot has to make a difficult maneuver, or if the plane goes through turbulence.

So most people will understand that some sort of turmoil is expected if you say "Fasten your seatbelts". But it's often used jocularly, as if the difficulty is trivial or survivable.

A few idiomatic examples:

• The die is cast.


• Caesar has crossed the Rubicon.


• Hannibal has crossed the Alps.

The first two idioms refer to the same event. From Wikipedia:

With this step, he entered Italy at the head of his army in defiance
of the Senate and began his long civil war against Pompey and the
Optimates. The phrase, either in the original Latin or in translation,
is used in many languages to indicate that events have passed a point
of no return. It is now most commonly cited with the word order
changed ("Alea iacta est") rather than in the original phrasing. The
same event inspired another idiom with the same meaning, "Crossing the
Rubicon".

More colloquially, you could say the shit has hit the fan.

I think if you use the "Winter Is Coming" allusion, most will understand what you mean.

"A storm is coming," or "a storm is brewing" is common and well-understood.

"ominous signs of tough times" comes to mind. Or, simply, "tough times ahead".

• 
  ominous -1. menacing, threatening: ominous black clouds; ominous rumblings of discontent. 2. Of or being an omen, especially an evil one.

From the web:

1 - "It would require a significant change in their strategy to prepare for the tough times ahead."

2 - The ominous signs of growing tensions were everywhere. In Asia, Emperor Hirohito's armies had invaded the Chinese mainland.

Politicians often say it in times of crisis: "Yet there are still tough times ahead, and tough decisions to be made. I have reluctantly concluded that a constitutional amendment, demanding we focus our efforts on balancing the budget, is the only sure way to make us accountable, and ..."

Gird your loins. Vocabulary.com says:

"Gird your loins and prepare for battle!" Okay, no one says "gird your
loins" anymore (which basically means "tighten your pants"), but gird
is still used as a verb to mean "get ready for a dangerous situation."

To gird is to prepare for a military attack, but more loosely it
refers to readying oneself for any kind of confrontation. When you
gird for something, you are preparing for the worst-case scenario.
Gird can also mean "fasten something tightly with a belt or a band"
(as in "gird your loins"), or it can mean "to surround or encircle." A
field that is girded by trees is surrounded and encircled by trees.

The source is overly dismissive of gird your loins, although it is true that it is rarely said now except semi-humorously, as in:

One hour 'til the physics final. All we can do now is gird our loins
and pray there is no surprise.

The loins are the area of the sexual organs, and girding one's loins means to put protection around that area before going into battle.