Effort-gift

No one develops magic by accident, and it cannot be carried by bloodline. All magic must be sought out or earned.

''"There once was a man named John Henry, who could drive steel so strongly he was faster than a steam powered machine..."

"After seven years of training in the sword and meditation on the nature of their secret techniques, the master of the school of the Tiger's Gaze can strike an opponent ten thousand times in a single second, so that no part of them remains un-cut..."''

With sufficient effort, and passion, magic is developed at the upper ends of extraordinary talent. Once expertise had been reached, a truly motivated individual can begin to develop abilities that are supernatural. These abilities will match and enhance the effort that was extended, manifesting as a talent in a person's chosen field that makes their accomplishment and achievement in that field more extraordinary.

For instance: a devoted master violinist may be able to train themselves to play songs so beautifully that they can evoke any emotion they choose in listeners. Or, they may be able to play for days on end and never miss a single note or break a single bow thread, never tire or falter. Or, perhaps the sound of their single instrument sounds like an entire orchestra of strings, a room rich and full of music played with ghostly hands. It depends largely on what they were good at to begin with and the thing they wish they could accomplish, as well as the qualities they admire in others and consciously try to emulate. If you're building a character in this setting, this magic is extremely flexible as to what it is they'll gain as their magic, but the limits set on how and when they gain it are going to be very specific.

Magic will never be easy or effortless to gain. It will never result in power you didn't intend, or want, because it's so difficult to gain the mundane mastery that it requires that a genuinely unmotivated person just won't ever get good enough. They have to want to go far beyond what is adequate or normal, to reach the height of what they can achieve and still be unsatisfied and push on. It corresponds to time and work, not natural talent, though, as with anything, having a talent certainly makes the process easier to begin. It is extremely rare to earn effort magic before middle age, and some people will never get it at all - if an individual doesn't think it's worth it, for example, or if they don't have anything they want to dedicate their life towards. A person who does earn magic this way will only ever have one effort gift.

In the event that, say, our master violinist from the above example has a secondary passion in an unrelated field (let's say: sailing) and somehow manages to gain complete mastery in both, they will not develop a second gift. Instead, their gift will change to reflect both sides of their passion. Perhaps their playing is so beautiful it can persuade the wind to change, for smooth sailing. Perhaps they can bow or pluck over rigging ropes and knots will tie or untie themselves as they hum and sing.

Because magic only comes through practice of a non-magical skill, there is currently no way through effort to learn magic that cannot in any way be practiced or honed through mundane means. Your classic "teleport" spell won't emerge as an effort-talent, because disappearing completely into thin air and reappearing somewhere else isn't really related to something you can practice in a mundane fashion.