Linked epic in my steam account, old inventory gone

hello! can someone help me with this problem im having?

i have this old steam account that i’ve lost access to it a long time ago, today i regained access to it and decided to link it into my epic account that i have since rl became f2p in 2020.

after i linked, all my old items (besides dlc’s) are gone!! and i had a lot of stuff that i actually cared about.

anyone here knows what do i do? and if this happened to somebody else, how did you solve it?