Laravel Migration Issue: Database does not exist

I’ve been scratching my head for maybe the last hour trying to figure out what’s going on.

I deleted my database.sql file since I wanted a new one from scratch. I’ve done this dozens of times, but upon running php artisan migrate:fresh it returned the following error:

Database file at path [{..}/database/database.sqlite] does not exist. Ensure this is an absolute path to the database. (Connection: sqlite, SQL: PRAGMA foreign_keys = ON;)

  at vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php:829
    825▕                     $this->getName(), $query, $this->prepareBindings($bindings), $e
    826▕                 );
    827▕             }
    828▕ 
  ➜ 829▕             throw new QueryException(
    830▕                 $this->getName(), $query, $this->prepareBindings($bindings), $e
    831▕             );
    832▕         }
    833▕     }

  1   [internal]:0
      IlluminateFoundationApplication::IlluminateFoundation{closure}(Object(AppProvidersAppServiceProvider))
      +17 vendor frames 

  19  app/Providers/AppServiceProvider.php:24
      IlluminateSupportFacadesFacade::__callStatic("table")

This has always created the database itself, why is it not now?

I created the database.sqlite in the original directory manually, and it came out with this error instead:

SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1 no such table: kingdoms (Connection: sqlite, SQL: select count(*) as aggregate from "kingdoms")

  at vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php:829
    825▕                     $this->getName(), $query, $this->prepareBindings($bindings), $e
    826▕                 );
    827▕             }
    828▕ 
  ➜ 829▕             throw new QueryException(
    830▕                 $this->getName(), $query, $this->prepareBindings($bindings), $e
    831▕             );
    832▕         }
    833▕     }

I thought this might be an issue with the create_kingdoms_table.php migration, so I removed it to see, and somehow, the error is still the same even with the migration gone, even after clearing cache.