Sorcery

The magic native to Elsewhere, it involves using the aspects of “lifeforce” to fuel magical effects which are separated between sorcery gifts and ritual sorcery. The lifeforce components in humans are breath, stamina, wakefulness, health and youth. Sorcery gifts are each tied to a different lifeforce component and can be used by a simple act of will. Sorcery rituals are a series of actions that can be combined and changed to create a vast variety of effects, still using lifeforce components, but often more than one. Rituals are much more versatile than gifts, but require much more prep time and research.

Lifeforce

The energy that permeates all living things and empowers sorcery magic. Spending lifeforce aspects will have suitable effects on a person. Each aspect will be better suited for some things than others, which is reflected in rituals and gifts. It is separated in five different components:
Breath: spending it will cause the feeling and the effects of asphyxiation. Breath has an affinity for automated and reactive effects. Example: temperature regulation that does not require explicitly thinking about changing the temperature to the desired level.
Stamina: spending stamina causes physical tiredness and can lead to an inability to move. Stamina has an affinity for physical and energy effects. Example: telekinesis.
Wakefulness: spending this will lead to mental tiredness and the need to sleep. Its affinity is for mind-affecting and sensory effects. Example: mental communication.
Health: typically, spending health will lead to effects similar to starvation and general ill-being, but some side effects might be more painful or exotic. It’s fairly flexible, but has an affinity for the very physical nature of things. Example: change iron into gold.
Youth: Ironically, spending this will not outright cause people to age on the spot, but their aging will accelerate until it matches their current youth level; another possible side effect is cancer. It naturally degrades over time. Youth is the most powerful of all lifeforce aspects and it has affinity for permanent and strong effects. Example: the creation of permanent artifacts.
It’s also possible to manipulate one’s own lifeforce to improve healing, change one aspect into another and transfer lifeforce into other people. Sufficiently skilled practitioners can use their manipulation of lifeforce to control their bodies more directly, from relatively simple applications like not scarring to controlling their own heartbeat. When someone is “full” they don’t produce more lifeforce, but it’s possible to give someone more lifeforce than their “full” total and for them to hold to that extra for a time. How easy it is to hold onto extra lifeforce is inversely proportional to its recovery speed, with Youth not requiring any effort at all.
Components sorted by size: Youth; Health; Wakefulness; Stamina; Breath.
Components sorted by recovery speed: Breath; Stamina; Wakefulness; Health. Youth doesn’t recover naturally.

Sorcery rituals

Sorcery rituals are the most commonly practiced and easily available form of magic. Taking the form of various actions which can be used to create magical results. Rituals are separated into schools, which can be considered akin to languages (or better yet, computer languages) with the different components being the “words”. To be able to use a sorcery school one must learn a certain amount (but not the entirety of) steps and their properties.
Otherwise, ritual components can be nearly anything and because of superstitious assumptions, scientific ignorance or even purposeful opacity some sorcery schools can have very esoteric and non-straightforward steps. In fact, the Daliath religion purposefully made a sorcery school where their various religious practices allow the casting of sorcery rituals.
Due to complex factors in their making, sorcery schools have different strengths at how efficient they are at spending lifeforce, furthermore they might just be easier or harder to learn or have components that are variously harder to enact (because they require expensive materials, a specific state of mind, precise movements, or anything really).
Creating a new sorcery school is no easy task, taking years of dedication to truly understanding magic and then figuring a way to pivot into a new way of doing things. The various rituals to fully create a school also total a Youth expenditure of at least ten years. This kept the number of sorcery schools very low throughout history and most people who went so far as to create one had a very strong goal in mind. Creating a new sorcery school is akin to enchanting an artifact, but the effect is cast in the world and it self-propagates making sorcery “contagious” through even the most minimal contact between universes.
Examples of ritual components: drawing symbols on people’s skins, burning herbs, drawing a circle and putting various materials around (crystals, tools, candles, etc). The Daliath church’s sorcery school largely uses prayers.

Gifts

The other major aspect of sorcery. Sorcery gifts are powers, each associated with a lifeforce aspect and fueled by same. They are an intrinsic part of the person and require no elaborate steps like rituals. Using gifts simply requires a mental action.

Acquiring

Gifts can be acquired through meditation by manipulating one's own lifeforce and making the gift "grow" through exercise. It's also possible to develop gifts through circumstances that cause intense disturbance in the lifeforce, such as intense harm. However, this is very rare, because most people that are not natural sorcerers don't survive such situations.
How long it takes to develop a gift is proportion to that gift's size, with Breath taking the least amount of time and Youth taking the longest.

Related Historical Events

• 274 MME
  The Day of The Lost Centuries