One of the things that might explain the weird efi behavior is an earlier change in FreeBSD which required a setting in the bios, which is documented here https://docs.opnsense.org/hardware/serial_connectivity.html#legacy-uart-vs-uefi-serial
That's odd because this is exactly the problem when the UART settings are wrong in the BIOS. Did this occur with 24.1 previously or is it new on 24.7? Any upgrade-related reboot will be on 24.7 kernel already.
┌─coreboot configuration utility───────────────────────────────────────────────┐│ ││┌─Press F1 when done─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │││ baud_rate 115200 │ │││ │ │││ interleave_chip_selects Disable │ │││ │ │││ power_on_after_fail Disable │ │││ │ │││ debug_level Emergency │ │││ │ │││ nmi Disable │ │││ │ │││ iommu Disable │ │││ │ │││ ECC_memory Disable │ │││ │ │││ user_data 0 │ │││ │ ││└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ ││ ││ ││ │└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘