My kind of science-ish magic system concept
I honestly don't know if something similar has been done before, I suspect it has, but I couldn't find anything like it so I'm postint it anyway.
Basically, my concept is that the ability to do magic would be the ability to move protons, neutrons and electrons from atom to atom. What I think would happen is that people could move them from one atom to another, making it a different element (Although I honestly have no idea if that's how it works, if it doesn't, I'll make it work like that) or move just the protons out of an atom into another atom, making both atoms instable, possibly leading to some chemical reactions occuring.
Like, for example you could possibly modify the atoms in front of you to make them some element that freezes at room temperature, in order to make some kind of ice shield.
I don't really know much about chemistry so I don't know if there would any elements that would lead to interesting results when added together like this, I don't even know if the ice shield example could he in any way possible, but I personally like this system so I think I could probably just add some elements into my world that do some interesting things. I don't really want to add "basic" elements, what I mean by this is that I don't just want to add things that just explode in contact with air because that'd just be boring.
As for the cost of using this magic I want it to be like the cost of doing things in real life. Like, when you run you lose energy etc. I'm not really into there being some mana counter or something invisible to the human eye. I was thinking that creatures able to do magic would have something like magic organs (WIP name). They would work somewhat like lungs, when you use magic, they suck in air and release it after. The more protons/electrons/neutrons you want to move at once the more air they need, and to increase their capacity you have do magic regularly, live healthly and breathe properly.
I know this post is kind of badly written, mostly because I'm barely awake and English isn't my first language, but I would be thanful for constructive criticism and ideas on how to expand it.