End portal to return to Overworld fall damage

On normal difficulty, after the most recent updated, my girlfriend and I decided to kill the ender dragon for a third time after acquiring fully enchanted Netherite with the best enchants possible. We always want to try seeing how fast we can kill the Ender dragon. After defeating it for a 3rd time, no egg dropped, and we grabbed all the experience that dropped and killed some Endermen as they were being aggressive as always. We decided to head back and grab some more blocks to build up to the portals to the outer edges of the End and explore more End Cities and grab more loot and such. As we were talking on Discord, and heading back at the same time to ensure nothing happens, I lost 3/4 of my health and she died from jumping into the portal. After a bit of confusion, we try to figure out what happened. She and I both left with full health and a full hungry meter as we always do. I went back through to see if I could find any of her equipment or experience and nothing was there. I decided to dig under the portal to see if it fell inside or underneath the portal with no success. She jumps back into the portal a second time, this time walking into it, with the same results. I went through and lost half of my health. There was never any fall damage returning back to the Overworld from the End before, and now there is, which makes me scared to even return until there is some hotfix that makes it so you don't have to use an enderchest/shulker boxes and lose all experience. Until then, the End and the End Cities are dead content.