When this happened during the last big Zorin Update for me it was 4/7/2023 ..... I just thought it was a fluke but today this large update did the same thing today 7/7/ 2023 .....
Right in the middle of updating my screen went black and a cursor in the left hand upper corner started blinking ..... I let it blink for 45 mins after which I hit ctrl / alt / delete to which I got no response just like last time .... but instead of doing a hard shutdown I waited a few seconds and this message appeared ..... please see photo ..... sorry for the poor quality .....
About a minute later the cursor appeared back in the left hand upper corner but didn't blink and I noticed my WiFi dongle started blinking like crazy which told me something was being downloaded ..... it didn't do that the last time ..... after about 60 sec. the log-in screen appeared and I was able to open Zorin .....
Now I know in the past when ever there was a big update if I was required to do a reboot it told me to do so not just go to a blank screen with a blinking cursor ..... that's something Windows would do ......
This looks like a race condition. I can see you have Nvidia and intel graphics.
I tried looking into known bugs and came back with a list as long as my arm dealing with Different kernels from 5.15 through 5.17, Nvidia drivers and initrd.
Without really nailing down the culprit.
So - you did not restart due to an update - you restarted due to a system crash that resulted from the update.
Do you have Nvidia set as dedicated for heavy use only?
If not, that may be a way to prevent this issue. I have Nvidia set to only be used on demand.
Well actually it went to a black screen both times while downloading an update ..... the first time I waited for about 15 mins than did a hard shutdown ..... that was on on 7/4/23 (sorry I said 4/7/23 above) ....
Then today on 4/7/23 I waited 45 mins before trying to get out of the blank (except for the flashing cursor) but instead of a hard shutdown I hit the C/A/D keys and it went into the login screen after the message above .....
...... or is that patience ....