The problem occurred when I entered my first "Gateway portal" (as I know them, the small portal consisting of bedrock in a small pod-like shape that supposedly takes you to the outer ring of islands). I did some research about these portals beforehand and built an area around it, along with carefully throwing only one ender pearl directly into the middle and not moving at all until I was in the outer ring of islands and wouldn't fall off. After I threw the ender pearl and past the loading screen, I started falling on the other side and was dumped directly into the void before anything appeared to load on my screen.