Sand. Endless sand. I woke to its abrasive caress on my skin, seeping through the tatters of my clothes, leaving a gritty residue in every crevice. The night had been unkind—bone-chilling cold replacing the sun's merciless inferno. My body ached, a constant reminder of the endless cycle of suffering in this desolate place.

I wiped the crust of sleep from my eyes, blinking against the harsh morning light. The rusted structure, the testament to a world lost to ambition, loomed nearby. Its presence was both a beacon and a burden, a reminder of the knowledge that had splintered through my mind like shards of broken glass.

As I lay there, thoughts drifted like the sands around me, carried by half-remembered whispers. The necromancer... You are the bridge... Between realms. The echoes of the dead had become my constant companions, fragments of their existence swirling into my consciousness, unsettling my already fragile sense of self.

The ruins seemed to pulse with a latent energy, as if the residue of whatever catastrophe had happened there refused to be silenced. I approached cautiously, the weight of my new identity pressing down like an invisible shroud. My instincts tingled with a heightened awareness, each step resonating with the whispers of lives once lived.

Kneeling by a fragment of corroded circuitry, my fingers traced the delicate wires, feeling their age and fragility against my skin. This detritus of a forgotten era called to me, an enigma wrapped in the shroud of amnesia that blanketed our world. Time... Something with time... The thought was elusive, slipping away as quickly as it appeared.

I closed my eyes, attempting to focus—the faces of the dead flickered in the darkness behind my lids, their voices merging into a haunting chorus. Call us... We know... You'll see... The whispers urged me deeper into a trance-like state, the boundary between the living and the dead blurring until it seemed indistinct.

Summoning them was a dance with uncertainty, my fledgling powers far from reliable. I extended myself mentally, like a hand reaching through a veil. For a disorienting moment, I felt the ground beneath me dissolve. Instead, I stood amidst shadowy figures, indistinct and ghostly. Faces swam towards me, eyes alight with the grim wisdom of the beyond.

Among them, one face stood out—an old man, eyes searching, seeming more solid than the rest. His voice cut through the cacophony, clear and precise. “You seek answers, child. The past manipulated... twined... unraveled. Temporal disturbances.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came. Only feelings of confusion and dread managed to spill out of me into this spectral realm. The old man continued, unaffected by my inability to articulate my doubts. “We tampered... without restraint. History torn asunder, time itself fractured.” His voice was imbued with remorse and dire warning.

The vision began to waver, my tenuous hold slipping as my physical self trembled. The cost of wielding this magic became all too clear—the more I reached out, the more fragmented my mind became. But amidst the deluge of memory slips and spectral whispers, one phrase stood out, firm and irrefutable: “Beware the ripples in time, they seek to consume.”

Suddenly, a sharp pain spiked through my head, snapping me back to the stark reality of the desert ruins. The figures vanished, the old man’s warning echoing in my bones. I gasped, each breath a ragged plea for clarity in a world that offered none.

My weary eyes scanned the horizon. The knowledge imparted by the old spirit haunted me—history torn asunder. How many like me wandered the wastelands, seeking lost fragments of a reality doomed by overreaching ambition?

I pushed myself up, the weight of this newfound understanding a physical ache. Each step away from the ruins felt like a trek through the fabric of time itself, unsteady, ever-changing. The whispers had grown silent, but their implications roared in my mind, a relentless reminder of the uncertainty that governed this cursed land.

I moved forward into the unknown, driven by a flickering determination. The Scorched Desert stretched out endlessly, hostile and indifferent. My journey, a search for answers, had only begun. And as I walked, I carried with me the unshakeable belief that tampering with time had been our downfall—a conviction that would guide me to either survival or oblivion.

In the heart of the wasteland, amidst the ruins and the whispers, I was a necromancer—a nascent seeker in a world fractured by the very essence of existence. And so, I continued, stepping forward into the ever-shifting sands, the echoes of the past my only compass.