6.16+ Kernels freeze on "Loading initial ramdisk"

I'd been using 'cachyos-sources-6.14.7' for about a month, attempted to upgrade to a 6.15 kernel and while it worked there was a bunch of dmesg spam about preempt and scx. So I waited another numbered version in 6.16 in hopes the spam was fixed, but it simply does not launch. With some searching I found someone had a similar issue and it was due to an update in `installkernel-60.` So downgraded though that didn't work. dracut was recently upgraded to disable a default use flag, but that wasn't it either. Today I tried some more troubleshooting to see if I can get to the bottom of the problem. 'gentoo-kernel-bin-6.16.7 launches fine. Built `cachyos-sources-6.15.8` which not only launches but this version is without the dmesg spam. So I figured it must be some kernel config options, went back to build 6.16.7 with my exact 6.14.7 .config file, and it still doesn't launch. Messed around with some framebuffer config options, grub launch options, and experimented with iommu/svm options in my bios but 6.16 and higher still locks up at "Loading initial ramdisk." Any ideas?