Created artifacts/line3/next.png: valid 1254 × 1254 PNG, visually inspected. Recognisable wall and cave-style Pepe; no text. Exact pixel preservation of unpainted rock is not guaranteed.

Created artifacts/line4/next.png: a 1254 × 1254 RGB PNG showing Pepe emerging from a charcoal hollow and reaching for an ochre ember.

I used built-in imagegen for the pigment and composited it onto the supplied wall. Visual inspection found the rock recognizable and no letters or numbers. Unmet visual requirements: none found.

I painted the first panel of line 5 and saved it as artifacts/line5/next.png. It's a square PNG, 1254 × 1254, RGB, the same size as the wall.

What happens in it: on the left of the bare rock there's a smudged, rubbed-in patch of charcoal black, the nothing. Pepe has just stepped out of it. He's drawn in yellow ochre with a burnt-stick charcoal outline, big chalk-white eyes with heavy lids, and a wide red-ochre mouth. One hand still trails back into the dark. The other reaches toward a small fire he has just found: red and yellow ochre flames, charcoal sticks underneath, chalk sparks. A short line of red-ochre frog tracks starts under the darkness, so the first steps come out of nothing. I didn't paint a Pepe painting a wall, and there are no letters, numbers or frame.

How it was made: the image tool failed. Gemini 3.1 Flash Image returned a 429 quota error with a limit of 0, retry in about 15 hours, so no AI image model was used. image-pro was not available in this session. Instead I wrote a Python script with Pillow and numpy, installed only in test/scratch/, that lays pigment directly onto a copy of the wall. Each colour is multiplied by the rock's own lighting and relief, with noise for wear and wobbly edges. The wall's texture, cracks, vignette and the small cluster of dots at the top left all stay visible. The original wall file is untouched; its checksum still matches.

Checks I ran:

• File: read back as PNG, 1254 × 1254, RGB.
• Wall still there: I compared the result with the wall pixel by pixel. About 26% of pixels changed, all of it pigment on the rock face. The rock, cracks and framing are unchanged.
• Looking at it: I viewed the image myself over three drafts. That's my own judgement only, not an independent review.

Requirements only partly met:

• Style: because it's procedural, it looks cleaner and more even than a real Lascaux or Chauvet painting. The ochre fill reads a little flat, and the darkness looks airbrushed rather than smeared by hand.
• Colour: Pepe is yellow ochre rather than green, since only earth pigments were allowed. He's recognisable by his eyes, lids and mouth.

Following rule 4 (no extra files), I added no README. The output file is left untracked, as asked.

Created artifacts/line1/next.png: a 1254 × 1254 PNG painted on the supplied wall. Pepe is shown as a cave figure; there are no letters or numbers. No visual requirements remain unmet.

Created artifacts/line2/next.png: a 1254 × 1254 RGB PNG showing cave-painted Pepe emerging and reaching toward a white object on the supplied wall.

I checked the PNG bytes and visually reviewed the painting. No unmet visual requirements observed.

I've painted the first gathering, but I couldn't make each Pepe recognisable from its line, because the five line paintings weren't in my workspace. The only input I had was the bare wall, so I invented five Pepes that look different from each other. They may not match the ones painted in lines 1–5.

Output: artifacts/gathering/next.png is a square PNG, 1254 × 1254, 8-bit RGB, the same size as the wall.

What happens: five Pepes sit around one small fire, all leaning toward the same light. They are told apart by colour and by what they carry:

• a red-ochre Pepe
• a yellow-ochre Pepe with a spear
• a big charcoal-black Pepe holding a stick toward the flame
• an orange-ochre Pepe
• a small chalk-white Pepe with black spots, beside a red feather

For a group that won't be here long, the moment is that they find one another and share the fire while it lasts.

How it was made: I generated the figures with the image tool (flux-schnell) on a plain background, then laid them onto the wall with a Python script as worn pigment. The paint takes the wall's own torchlight and texture, and the raised bits of rock rub through. Outside the painted area (about 14% of pixels), every pixel is exactly the original wall. The wall file was not changed; its SHA-256 still matches.

Checks: I looked over the full image and a close-up of the figures. There are no letters, numbers, captions, borders or frames.

Requirements not fully met:

• Continuity with lines 1–5 (main gap): as above, the five Pepes may not match the ones from each line.
• Style: the figures are cleaner and more like illustration than a burnt-stick cave drawing. Their shading, the charred logs and the two similar ochre colours make them a bit too polished for Lascaux.
• Records: I didn't add a README or notes file, because the brief allows no extra files. This message is the record of size, format and gaps instead.

The output is left untracked for the daemon to upload, as instructed.