Type: Inland Sea
Location: Eastern Akanegumo
Status: Active (a working trade route and fishery, though never quite safe)
Access: Navigable by shallow-drafted junk; Shiosaki's fortified harbor on the western shore

The Sea of Ghosts is the great inland sea of eastern Akanegumo, fed by the Ayuri River out of the Yūreimori, so that everything which floats out of Yanagihama eventually crosses it. Cold, deep, and fog-prone, it earned its name long ago, and it is at the same time the deep province's lifeline, the water road that ties Akanegumo to the wider empire through the harbor at Shiosaki.

A long, mountain-walled sea whose far shore is lost in haze on all but the clearest days. The Ayuri delta and Shiosaki's harbor dominate the western shore, while the eastern shore rises toward the province's far frontier. Fishing villages cling to its coves, and lake traders run its length in shallow-drafted junks, every one of them carrying a lantern lit before dusk.

Its fisheries are rich and uncomplicated, the lake's one easy blessing. Kappa hold the river mouths and expect their courtesies, and the deeper water is said to have older tenants the lake folk feed and decline to name. Lake pirates work the trade lanes as a steady, mundane nuisance.

The lake folk hold that the drowned do not rest in these waters, and that the fogs that walk the surface at dawn are not entirely weather. Their rules are old and simple: lantern lit before dusk, voices low in the fog, and never answer a hail you cannot see the source of. Some say the sea remembers every soul it has taken.