Unfortunately GIGABYTE Support has not been much help. All they've suggested is doing everything I already tried (removing cmos battery, shorting pins, etc). Its been 6 days since I've last heard back from them.
I am honestly totally out of ideas for as to how to solve this. Im wondering if it was just an issue with that board/bios. I went to a support discord for my motherboard's manufacturer and spoke to a few seemingly knowledgeable folks, but english was not their first language and all they could make out to me was that it was "a bug with the bios," with no real indication as to whether or not it was safe to try again. Today I flashed the bios to the most recent version (f12), as I was looking at the bios versions and read that this update addressed some serious security concerns. (I literally had to take a few hours to remove some nasty malware today, so I've been eager to stay safe on the PC lately,)
Still haven't tried anything else out of fear of bricking the board, though. Really wish I could know the bios version on the bricked board. None of my friends have any CPUs with integrated graphics that would fit in the LGA1151 either, which would be a monumental help.