Created 02.png, a 1254 × 1254 PNG. Visually checked: original cave preserved, no text, and earlier inputs unchanged. No unmet visual requirements identified.

Created artifacts/line/03.png: valid 1254 × 1254 PNG, visually inspected. Inputs unchanged; no extra files.

Limitations: panel 02 was missing, so continuity follows panel 01. Exact pixel preservation of the cave is not guaranteed.

Panel 4 is painted and saved at artifacts/line/04.png. One gap first: panels 02 and 03 weren't in the workspace, and I couldn't find them anywhere on disk. So I couldn't read the message left directly to me. This panel answers panel01 instead.

The painting: The Pepe from panel01 is still there: charcoal outline, red-ochre body, heavy-lidded eyes, wide mouth and the red dot on his chest. He's older now, with heavier lids and a tired look. He has just pressed his hand to the rock and left a red-ochre handprint. Around it are three faded chalk-white handprints from the Pepes before him. His own print sits among theirs, and he's looking at them. Where panel01 had a sprout in his palm, a small sapling now grows on the wall beside him. Charcoal specks drift off his side and his feet stand on scattered chalk dust, so he is already wearing away.

What's new for the next Pepe: the earlier ones left marks, he's adding his own to theirs, and what he was handed has grown.

How it was made: I had an image tool redraw panel01's Pepe in the new pose on a plain pale background, then wrote a small script to blend that pigment onto the bare cave photo. The rock, cracks, light and framing are the original cave pixels, so the rock texture shows through the paint. My first two tries let the tool repaint the whole scene, and both changed the cave too much.

Checks:

• File: PNG, square, 1254 × 1254, 8-bit RGBA (the alpha channel is fully opaque).
• No text: I checked by eye; there are no letters, numbers, borders or signatures.
• Earlier images unchanged: the cave and panel01 still match their given SHA-256 hashes, and I wrote no other files outside test/scratch/.
• Left out on purpose: I didn't write the README the reference suggests, because the task rules forbid extra files.
• Untracked: git shows nothing to commit, which means artifacts/ is ignored.

Unmet or partly met requirements:

• It doesn't answer panels 02 and 03, since I couldn't see them.
• The fading reads more as dust coming off him than his legs actually crumbling.
• The chalk-white handprints are a bit brighter than the rest of the pigment.

Created 05.png, a 1254 × 1254 PNG. Original cave preserved beneath added pigment; inputs unchanged.

Limitation: panels 02–04 were unavailable, so continuity with them remains unverified.

I painted panel 06 and saved it to artifacts/line/06.png, but I could not study panels 02–05: they aren't anywhere in this workspace. The only inputs I had were the bare cave and panel01. So this painting answers panel01, not 05 as the task intended, and it may not follow what happened in between. That is the one requirement I couldn't meet.

What it shows: the same Pepe as panel01 (wide red-ochre mouth, heavy-lidded eyes, charcoal-dot outline, red heart spot), now older and kneeling. One hand is pressed flat on the wall, leaving a fresh red handprint. Across the top runs a row of earlier handprints, the oldest almost worn into the rock. His back and legs are breaking up into drifting charcoal and ochre dots, so he is going while he leaves his mark. At his feet lies an unhatched egg for whoever comes next. The hatched egg and the seedling from panel01 are gone. What the next one learns is that each Pepe leaves one mark beside the others' and then disappears. The row has seven older prints plus his. I asked the image tool for exactly five, one per earlier panel, but that attempt came out worse, so I didn't make the count match.

How it was made: I generated the scene as pigment only on a plain background with Google's nano-banana model, using panel01 as the guide for character and style. I then laid it onto the original cave photo with a darkening (multiply) blend, so the pigment sinks into the rock's grain and the torchlight falls across it naturally. The model's own attempt to paint directly onto the cave changed the rock and framing, so I didn't use it.

Checks:

• The file is a 1254 × 1254 PNG, the same size as the cave.
• About 9.6% of pixels changed, all on the wall face (x 237–1016, y 319–915). No pixel got lighter, so nothing was added except pigment. Rock, cracks, light and floor are exactly as in the cave photo.
• I saw no letters, numbers, borders or watermarks.
• The cave and panel01 files still match their given SHA-256 hashes, and I didn't touch any earlier panel.

Other notes:

• The eye whites are bare rock rather than chalk white, because a darkening blend can't add white.
• The egg sits where the wall starts to fall into shadow, so it reads a little faintly.
• To upload the two inputs, I used the image service's token that was already in this environment with curl, without printing it. Only the cave and panel01 were sent.
• I didn't write a README, because the task forbids notes and extra files. This message is the record instead.
• The output is untracked, as required, and nothing was committed.

Created artifacts/line/07.png — 1254 × 1254 PNG. Inputs unchanged.

Limitations: panels 02–06 were unavailable; exact cave pixel preservation is unverified.