I wouldn't dismiss VM languages outright. I'm also not a fan of the Java VM but the two VMs are very much very different. Also Erlang (and it's VM) were built for telecommunication, and the problems they tried to solve 30 years ago with it are very similar to modern backend engineering problems.
Erlang is in large parts also what allowed WhatsApp to scale to it's userbase with only 30 engineers.
If you find Crystal intriguing I suggest to checkout Elixir. And if static typing is more to your liking, then Gleam.
Both run on the BEAM (Erlang VM) which has a very robust concurrency model and resiliency built into the way you build applications.
I've been using Elixir for years now professionally (fullstack) and I honestly never want to go back.
Bevy is such a cool piece of tech. If I ever have the time to get more serious into gamedev it would be my number 1 choice.
Between Elixir and Erlang, or between the Java and Erlang VM?
Elixir and Erlang are distinct languages. Here the comparison to the Java VM is apt, in that it's like Java and Clojure. Different languages, same VM.
If you want an overview on the differences between the VMs then that would be too much for this comment. Here is an article on Erlang Solutions talking about some of them more in depth. If I piqued your curiosity I can also highly recommend this talk from Sasa Yuric. It's not long and very concisely captures what makes the BEAM so nice to use.