Awakened Magick

"Anything can be Magic. A song you hum while walking in the dark, a prayer at your bed side under candlelight, a wish on a shooting star, a pinky swear with your best friend, anything! What matters the most is the will inside your heart. Never let that falter."

Magic as a whole is not equal throughout its different forms. Some are only capable of pain-staking rituals with minor effects, some have very situational or ghostly forms of magical control, and many can't even wrap their heads around magic as a concept. The Awakened are the only with the double-edged sword of what they refer to as True Magick (spelt with a K to distinguish it from magic as a base concept, and to be fancy).
The Magick of the Awakened is on one hand extremely powerful, really only needing the Mages imagination and skill to pull off, although various materials and rituals are used to make them stronger and/or easier to cast. On the other hand, it's also potentially the most costly, as while reality won't react much to being gently nudged or kneaded, those who try to break or really warp it will find themselves being violently rebuffed, sometimes to the point of being unmade from reality entirely.
It is that sheer breadth of possibility against hard limits that have led to the end of many Mages, as they strive too high on their path to ascension and end up suffering the consequences, or feeling that they can never scale past their limits and give into an emotionless depressive state. But, even if the ambitious will have to face either end of their hubris sooner or later, there is still much to explore and utilize with True Magick.

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Effect

Awakened Magick can do just about anything the caster desires, but there are some limitations at play. First, it cannot break the generally accepted rules of reality too harshly, spells that push these limits are referred to as Vulgar Magick and invoke the Paradox, which will be written in more detail under Side Effects. Secondly, what exactly any given Mage can do is determined by their affinity within the Nine Spheres, subsections or "schools" of Magick as a whole. The Nine Spheres and their areas of influence are as follows:

• Correspondence - Deals with Distance, Spacial Area, and Communication
• Entropy - Deals with mathematic Chance and predetermined Fate
• Forces - Deals with Energy in all forms, electric, radioactive, thermodynamic, etc
• Life - Deals with Living things
• Matter - Deals with innanimate objects
• Mind - Deals with mental capabilities, either the casters own or other targets
• Prime - Deals with Quintessence, a.k.a the base energy behind Magick in all its forms
• Spirit - Deals with The Umbra, a realm of pure Quintessence, as well as ephemeral Spirits
• Tim- Deals with Time, either just ones perception or actual time manipulation .

Your standard Mage will have some skill with multiple Spheres, combining their strengths as they need for any given moment, but their primary talents will largely depend on the Sect (and sometimes specific factions within that Sect) that they belong to.
Mages also don't just Awaken being able to perform god-like feats right off the bat, there's an evolution of skill that occurs as one trains their Magick in various spheres. While there's obviously much malleability, there are generally five tiers of expertise:

1. Entry Level - Generally provides keen awareness and detection of the given sphere
2. Training Level - Allows minute and careful manipulation of the given sphere
3. Intermediate Level - Allows for more direct control of the given sphere
4. Advanced Level - Allows for stronger, more permenant control and more intricate manipulations
5. Expert Level - Allows for grand feats of control and manipulation of the given sphere. Runs the greatest risk of being Vulgar Magick

Side/Secondary Effects

All Awakened who use their primary Spheres enough will start to gain otherworldly effects in their day-to-day life, whether that's emennating strange sensations, having an odd look to their eyes or body, or gaining strange habits like talking to seemingly nothing or being uniquely obsessed with time.
The much more present and dangerous side effect to Magick is the Paradox. Essentially, Paradox is what happens when you try to change reality too harshly and it desides to fight back. In longer terms, there is a set perception of the Laws of Reality that the Awakened call The Consensus, and it is decided not by Mages or other supernatural creatures, but the billions of normal humans living in the world. Therefore, when a Mage begins to step too far and breaches the limits of Vulgar Magick, they run the risk of not only failing their attempted spell but getting backlashed by chaotic energy as reality snaps back into place. The punishments that come with Paradox vary and depend on how severe your attempted change was, and they can range from a simple wound to being fully shunted out of reality.
There are various ways to circumnavigate The Concensus and the threat of Paradox, but there's noway to avoid it entirely.

Manifestation

The best magical effects are those that do not appear to be magical at all, so many quick spells don't have a lot of flash and flare to them. However, when more Magick gets added to the system, you can see all sorts of glowing runes, multicolored light, bubbling elements, fractal transformations, you name it! There's no set aesthetic guide to Magick or the Spheres outside of usual colors and auras, but each Mage will have their own effects and differences due to their materials, their understanding, and their own personality.

Source

Magick, or more particularly Mana/Quintessence, is affected by a variety of different sources. Of course you have the Mage themselves and their inner Avatar. Then you have the Umbra, the realm of pure Quintessence that exists parallel to the real world. Then, depending on what magic you use, there are factors such as the Leylines, the spiritual Veil, the health of the land, the belief of the people, your own inner psychology and mood, so on and so forth.
In Tacoma, it's notable that despite not every Mage relying on the land for their magic, The Weakness primarily felt in the Leylines affects Magic as a whole no matter what, as if it's a radiating corrosion.