Fantasy books, stories, ＆c

Maybe using magic involves travelling to and learning to navigate another, even more fantastical place? Such as spirit magic, or dream magic, or travelling to the land of the dead? I think it would be interesting if learning magic also involved getting to know the people of this other domain (such as acquiring a "spirit guide", or making bargains, or learning a language even). Anything from Spirited Away to Hellraiser could serve as an inspiration

Yours sounds pretty awesome, there was also a novel 'Dreams of the dying' based on a Skyrim mod Enderal. It's magic system was also pretty good and the mages were at the constant risk of going mad.

Jack Vance (namesake of Vancian magic) introduced two interesting concepts in his Dying Earth series. In earlier books magic was essentially invented by the ancient masters who were expert logicians and scientists. Each spell was essentially a proof of concept that a sequence of actions compelled reality to act in a certain way.

By the time of the first short stories in the Dying Earth series, mankind has long since deteriorated due to an overreliance on what is essentially magic to the layperson. Even the wily magicians of the modern time are only capable of rote learning a few arguments at a time; hence the fire and forget Vancian magic system of old D&D.

In later books, magicians have returned to near godly power. They've somehow found a link between djinn-like creatures capable of controlling portions of reality, and the rote rituals of old. They've learned to essentially cut out the middle-man and directly enslave these djinni to do their bidding.

Kinda tangential, but are you familiar with the Nen system from the Hunter X Hunter series? It's a bit of a mix of martial arts themes and mana where each person has a bias toward certain abilities which can be trained/developed. I find it to be one of the more cohesive/rooted supernatural systems.