All keycodes within quantum are numbers between `0x0000` and `0xFFFF`. Within your `keymap.c` it may look like you have functions and other special cases, but ultimately the C preprocessor will translate those into a single 4 byte integer. QMK has reserved `0x0000` through `0x00FF` for standard keycodes. These are keycodes such as `KC_A`, `KC_1`, and `KC_LCTL`, which are basic keys defined in the USB HID specification.
On this page we have documented keycodes between `0x00FF` and `0xFFFF` which are used to implement advanced quantum features. If you define your own custom keycodes they will be put into this range as well.