  Non-zero topological charge is prohibited in the chiral limit of
gauge-fermion systems because any instanton would create a zero mode of the
Dirac operator. On the lattice, however, the geometric $Q_\text{geom}=\langle
F{\tilde F}\rangle /32\pi^2$ definition of the topological charge does not
necessarily vanish even when the gauge fields are smoothed for example with
gradient flow. Small vacuum fluctuations (dislocations) not seen by the
fermions may be promoted to instanton-like objects by the gradient flow. We
demonstrate that these artifacts of the flow cause the gradient flow
renormalized gauge coupling to increase and run faster. In step-scaling studies
such artifacts contribute a term which increases with volume. The usual $a/L\to
0$ continuum limit extrapolations can hence lead to incorrect results. In this
paper we investigate these topological lattice artifacts in the SU(3) 10-flavor
system with domain wall fermions and the 8-flavor system with staggered
fermions. Both systems exhibit nonzero topological charge at the strong
coupling, especially when using Symanzik gradient flow. We demonstrate how this
artifact impacts the determination of the renormalized gauge coupling and the
step-scaling $\beta$ function.
