Hi. I notice the same behavior sometimes when I attempt using Ventoy with various distros (I distro-hop a lot on multiple PCs). Try using the recommended balenaEtcher on another USB drive.
Ventoy had its own partition which prevented Calamares from moving forward. Using a USB I had made before (with unetbootin) it installed perfectly. I could never get Persistence to work, except with Ventoy, and had switched to always using it.
Thanks for the help.
My dreams of having one USB stick, from which I can install 16 different Linux distros, has not yet materialized.
But I do live in a society where 16 different Linux distros can “boot” from a single USB.