Am I missing a Step in the Arch Linux installation?

I'm trying to do my second Archlinux installation, and for some reason every time I do this the bootloader ends up being the most frustrating part. This is also the step that the archlinux installer doesn't really seem to go over (it pretty much just says "Install the bootloader)

The steps I've been doing on repeat have been:

-Fdisk, partition 1 is EFI (type 1), 5GB just to avoid headaches

Partition 2 is default Linux subsystem

-Mkfs.fat -F32 the EFI partition

-Mkfs.ext4 the linux partition

-mount /dev/sda2 /mnt

-mkdir /mnt/boot

-mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot (i've also tried /boot, which seems to end up even worse)

-pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware

I then generate the fstab file, which only shows one device, /.

I chroot into /mnt, and run

bootctl install

It then does it's thing, and upon reboot all I have is "reboot into Firmware Interface"

It seems like no matter how I configure it, bootctl doesn't actually see the linux install.

What am I missing and what did I miss in the installation instructions?

Just to clarify, this is with systemd-boot, but I also had similar issues when trying to install Grub on a separate setup, which unfortunately I can't remember exactly what I did to finally make it work.

This is a single OS install on hyper-v. Similar issues also occurred on vmware. I'm just trying to do the most basic installation of Arch Linux with a bootloader.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide

edit: Solved, the bootloader does not setup the loader.conf file or an entry for the operating system. The systemd-boot (bootctl) page includes examples on how to set this up. Thanks for the assistance everyone!