The Weave

The Weave is a construct that underlies and permeates all of reality. Magic is the art of manipulating this power to affect the world. Most commonly, this is done by an incantation, sigil, series of gestures or some combination of the three. The more perfect the sigil, The clearer the voice, the better the gestures, the more the Weave responds, making the spell more powerful.

Performing magic makes further acts of magic in the same are harder as the Weave "stiffens" in response to being manipulated. This makes further acts of magic more difficult, making magic less effective then stopping it altogether.

Normally, the Weave is perfectly colourless, but when concentrated, it takes on a whitish colour. Normally, this concentration is only found in slyphs and titan-metals. In this system, slyphs are self-aware knots in the Weave that must sustain themselves by consuming the Weave. Normally, this doesn't pose much of a problem, but the largest slyphs have the ability to shut off magic in an area with only their presence.

Titan-metal takes this even further. It is extremely concentrated magical power. Occasionally, pieces break off of it and become slyphs, but it mostly remains in solid chunks. In the proximity of titan-metal, the Weave is far more pliable, allowing more magic than normal to happen, but doing this consumes the metal.