3+ years of iPad PDF files disappeared! HELP!

Today I opened up my iPad to do some studying. I have an iPad Pro 5th Gen (2021, M1).

I opened files (the local files app that comes with the iPad), and looked at the folder where I put all my final exam stuff in. It says 0 items.

I looked at the other folders… they have 3-5 things in there whereas it’s supposed to be 20+ in each folder.

ALL of my older stuff are gone too. Three years worth of stuff. I don’t need those older ones at this current moment, but I was really hoping to keep those too. But I REALLY need at least my final exam material now!

I scrolled down to iCloud Data Recovery on the iCloud website and it said it found 154 items to recover. But none of those were things I urgently needed (it was the older stuff from the past 30 days). My newer things from the past week aren't there. I still tried to recover them anyway, and it said “154 items could not be restored.”

I also plugged my iPad into my laptop, went into iTunes, and tried to do a backup restore from a specific date. But it said this iPad has never been backed up before. I may not do it often but I KNOW for a fact that it has been backed up before.

The files range anywhere from less than 1 MB to a little over 100 MB. Most are about 20 MB. I also have about 40 GB of available storage left overall. There is no reason why they should just get deleted out nowhere when they were there just yesterday. I did NOT toggle or mess with any iCloud settings. I barely go there, so it's not me.

What should I do?! I really need those… I‘m beyond annoyed right now. I‘ve been using iPad Files for a little over three years and this has never happened before. Backed up or not, local files should NOT disappear like this!!!