Where do all my desktop icons go after a random Windows update?

After a recent Windows update, I turned on my computer expecting everything to look normal, but several desktop icons had mysteriously disappeared, leaving me wondering whether Windows had deleted my shortcuts, moved them somewhere else, or changed a display setting without telling me. What makes this particularly confusing is that my files still seem to exist when I search for them through File Explorer, yet the familiar icons I rely on every day are suddenly missing from the desktop, and I cannot figure out what triggered the change or how to restore the original layout without accidentally deleting anything important or creating duplicate shortcuts.