EFI stub ERROR failed to read file, failed to load initrd, efi_stub

EFI stub ERROR failed to read file, failed to load initrd, efi_stub_entry() fail

23 September 2024, 21:13:50

Today I did a

pacman -Syu

and rebooted and I could no longer boot.
My first inclination was to downgrade the kernel, so I looked in my pacman cache and did

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pacman -U linux-zen-6.9.2.zen1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst linux-zen-headers-6.9.2.zen1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

That didn't work.
I noticed that for a split second during boot this message would flash:

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EFI stub: ERROR: failed to read file
EFI stub: ERROR: failed to load initrd: 0x800000000000000a
EFI stub: ERROR: efi_stub_entry() failed!

I use an EFISTUB to boot and I'm pretty sure I hadn't changed it, but whatever, so I deleted all entries and recreated it, still no luck.
I don't get why it is talking about the initrd, here is what I have in /boot:

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# ls /boot
initfamfs-linux-zen-fallback.img initramfs-linux-zen.img intel-ucode.img vmlinuz-linux-zen

Here are the various boot entries I have tried, none have worked (the difference is the :

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efibootmgr --disk /dev/nvme0n1 --part 1 --create --label "Artix Linux Zen" --loader /vmlinuz-linux-zen --unicode 'cryptdevice=UUID=0290eade-0e29-40a1-bee6-17389bc36e5a:cryptlvm root=/dev/mapper/lvmSystem-root rw initrd=\intel-ucode.img initrd=\initramfs-linux-zen.img' --verbose
efibootmgr --disk /dev/nvme0n1 --part 1 --create --label "Artix Linux Zen" --loader /vmlinuz-linux-zen --unicode 'cryptdevice=UUID=0290eade-0e29-40a1-bee6-17389bc36e5a:cryptlvm root=/dev/lvmSystem/root rw initrd=\intel-ucode.img initrd=\initramfs-linux-zen.img' --verbose
efibootmgr --disk /dev/nvme0n1 --part 1 --create --label "Artix Linux Zen" --loader /vmlinuz-linux-zen --unicode 'cryptdevice=UUID=0290eade-0e29-40a1-bee6-17389bc36e5a:cryptlvm root=UUID=8dc0b7d3-d326-4c78-b13a-411b628750fd rw initrd=\intel-ucode.img initrd=\initramfs-linux-zen.img' --verbose

Just to be clear, to try to fix all this I am booting into live iso and running the following:

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cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvme0n1p2 cryptlvm
vgchange -ay
mount /dev/mapper/lvmSystem-root /mnt
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot
artix-chroot /mnt

and then I mess around.
The output of lsblk:

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# lsblk -o NAME,FSTYPE,LABEL,UUID,MOUNTPOINTS,PARTUUID # just the drives I'm working with
NAME                 FSTYPE      LABEL UUID                                   MOUNTPOINTS PARTUUID
nvme0n1                                                                                   
|-nvme0n1p1          vfat              CD98-8606                              /boot       cd126f1e-2316-4471-9cc9-ea5ebe82ebdb
`-nvme0n1p2          crypto_LUKS       0290eade-0e29-40a1-bee6-17389bc36e5a               b291cb9e-ffda-43c3-8606-aac558672ee8
  `-cryptlvm         LVM2_member       G8SpbS-eHT1-sdPi-SVk3-uNfC-3phl-g290nH             
    |-lvmSystem-swap swap              20de1d03-c4c6-4b29-a46a-f2a894e3eb7b               
    `-lvmSystem-root ext4              8dc0b7d3-d326-4c78-b13a-411b628750fd   /

Here's the relevant variables in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

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MODULES=(ext4)
HOOKS=(base udev autodetect modconf kms keyboard keymap consolefont block encrypt lvm2 filesystems fsck)
COMPRESSION="cat"

and lastly my /etc/fastab

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# /dev/mapper/lvmSystem-root
UUID=8dc0b7d3-d326-4c78-b13a-411b628750fd    /    ext4    rw,relatime    0 1
# /dev/nvme0n1p1
UUID=CD98-8606    /boot    vfat    rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro    0 2

I'm not sure what is going on anymore.
I was more familiar with all this when I first set it up years ago but I admit I am a little fuzzy on it now, any help would be appreciated.