Hi everyone. I’m building a near-future setting where a new Sahara civilization rises after discovering buried Atlantean engineering beneath Carthage. This is Part 1 of the origin story. Would love feedback on the worldbuilding, tone, and characters.

THE COVENANT OF SAND, PART 1

The Pattern and the Founders

Orion Hale had been awake for thirty hours when the Sahara called to him.

The orbital radar sweep was supposed to be a routine calibration run. SAR Q was designed for Mars subsurface ice detection, not archaeology. Hale liked aiming expensive tools at familiar places simply to see what happened.

This time something happened.

On the holo display the desert lit up with geometry.

Not dunes.
Not erosion.
Shapes.

A six pointed structure buried beneath hundreds of meters of sand.
Rectilinear channels stretching for miles.
A hollow beneath ancient Carthage that matched no known record.

Hale leaned forward, eyes locked on the impossible map below.

“Run the scan again.”

The shapes sharpened into clearer lines.

Orion Hale smiled.
“It is real.”

He called three people.

Pax Lukkonen answered first, a drone prodigy wearing a Hawaiian shirt and holding a half assembled quadcopter.
“You sound excited. What did you break now?”
“Pack your drone rigs,” Hale said. “We are flying to Tunisia.”

Alaric Korb answered after a long pause, the philosopher CEO studying the data in silence before speaking.
“This looks ancient.”
“It is engineered,” Hale replied.

Laurence Orison, billionaire collector and database baron, opened the file from the deck of a yacht.
“Is this under Carthage?”
“It is.”
Orison set down his glass. “Tell me what you want.”
“Everything,” Hale said.

Two weeks later the four of them stood in the dust of Carthage.

Pax’s drones swept the cisterns with lidar until a hollow space appeared behind a collapsed wall. He dropped through the breach before anyone else could move.

The chamber below was perfectly preserved.
Silica plates covered in diagrams.
Maps of the Sahara drawn as a living, river fed world.
Solar concentrators.
Algae cultivation basins.
A star shaped symbol labeled:
Atal An Tes, The Western Sanctuary.

“Atlantis,” Pax whispered.

Korb knelt beside a crystalline map.
“Not a myth. A civilization.”

Hale felt his pulse rise.

“We are going to finish what they began.”

I’d love feedback on any thoughts on the believability, characters, tone, or anything this opening makes you wonder about are appreciated.

I’ll post Part 2 (The Carthage Archive and the Mauritanian Concession)