Director says “we have no plan to create a career path here”. What would you do?

Background: ive been at this company for almost 2 years but have about 4 years experience in this field. Im ready to do more and I’ve stepped up a lot when we’re short staffed for a months. My goal is to get promoted from regular employee -> senior employee. Of note: Two of my previous coworkers got promoted from a regular -> senior within 2.5 years of being in their role, so this didn’t seem like a crazy ask given I came in with more experience than they did when they started this job.

As the title says, our director told my manager this when she asked about promotions within our team. According to our director, they said the “need” for a senior comes from being an indispensable member of the team which comes with time and projects. Projects I’ve created myself have been shut down by our director and I’ve already expanded my workload to take on more. This is just so vague.

While my short term goal is to set up a 3-6 month SMART plan with my manager, if you were told this, what would you recommend. I feel so worthless hearing this. I left my previous job to join this one because I was also passed up on a promotion (twice). Feels like the same situation again and without any constructive feedback.