Acer Nitro V15 stuck in BIOS

Trying to fix a boot issue on my Acer Nitro V15 (anv15) with my distro (PikaOS)

**What happens:**

* Laptop boots straight into BIOS
* SSD (WD drive) is detected in BIOS
* No normal boot options in F12 menu
* I can manually select EFI files
* SYSTEMD-BOOTX64.EFI is visible
* Selecting PikaOS/systemd-boot results in “reboot into firmware interface”
* USB boot is NOT detected even though USB works on other devices

**What I already tried:**

* Disabled Secure Boot
* Disabled Fast Boot
* Recreated boot USB using balenaEtcher (Linux ISO)
* Tried multiple USB ports
* Added manual EFI boot entry in BIOS

For context, previously booted only Linux (PikaOS) and attempted Arch Linux- which failed, at some point in the past (not recently). Issue started suddenly.

What would cause systemd-boot to immediately return to firmware, and why would USB boot stop being detected in BIOS? What should I do next to try resolve this?