newline segment causes $<2> to be output in prompt

With this as the only contents of my .zshrc (a hopefully minimal example taken from where the last issue dealing with this left off https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k/issues/2616#issuecomment-2017785640):

if [[ ! -e ~/powerlevel10k ]]; then
  git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git ~/powerlevel10k
fi
source ~/powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k.zsh-theme
POWERLEVEL9K_MODE=ascii
POWERLEVEL9K_DISABLE_HOT_RELOAD=true
POWERLEVEL9K_LEFT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(newline)
POWERLEVEL9K_RIGHT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=()

export TERM=vt100

return

this is the output:

$<2>

This is via ssh to a box running alpine linux. Due to this unpopular setup, if it isn't simple to diagnose/fix, it probably isn't worth your time, but in case it is simple, thought I'd mention it.

by the way, it's really hard to search github issues for symbols. I skimmed a few hundred, hopefully I didn't miss this being discussed somewhere other than https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k/issues/2616

thank you for all your work :)