Like I've posted before, one of my favourite things about chapter 4 is definitely the prophecy panels. And as I've said I became really intrigued by the roots one and the sentence about the lost poor children. And I realised that there is evidence supporting this, it's just that it's not really connected at all considering we've just heard about all of this stuff.
Like, what if Dess disappeared because she became lost in the bunker? We know from Noelle that the quartet used to explore Hometown (she mentions they observed the graveyard at night). And what place is the only mysterious one in the whole town? That's right, the bunker. The “ROOTS” panel shows a house between two trees. It may mean not the actual roots that grow underground, but rather the metaphorical ones - roots is where the person comes from. The panel is reminding Kris about their roots, their childhood (note that Kris is the only one present during the whole sequence). The organ guy (forgot his name) mentions that the children were lost specifically where the forest would grow. And where does the forest grow? Around the bunker. If you backtrack between the rooms you will be teleported to the egg room. But this one is very, very different from the others. It's a hospital floor where Kris attended therapy (the rudinn receptionist says “which one of you was the patient anyway?”). The purpose of the room might be bigger than we think. Something inside that bunker was so bad that Kris literally had to go to therapy. The Forgotten Man seemingly does possess meta-knowledge and he might know what happened to Kris in their childhood. Also in the shadow mantle minigame right before we fight eram we need to come inside of the bunker. As hero_sword approaches it Kris tries to direct it away from it, but we eventually bring it right to the doors. Why would Kris direct the sprite away if they didn't know what's inside there? Yes, because they knew, they knew that it's something so bad even the game replica scared them.
The only thing I am really unsure about is “the pointed tail”. The “tail of hell”. It might be FRIEND, of course, that was never an exception (the pointed tail → they'll see the tail of hell take crawl→ the cats in the Cat Petterz and /rarecats page are animated with circles → Noelle seemingly got FRIEND as a cat there and it appears as the 100th cat on the page), but except this there's practically 0 evidence about something other being it.
And honestly, on the topic of children following the pointed tail, it might allude to the childish carelessness that the friends had while exploring the town. And, in result, Dess went missing, possibly still trapped inside the bunker. Asriel went to college to forget that traumatic event, Kris went to therapy which explains the egg room, and Noelle while seems okay at first and just missing her sister also might have a trauma that she's just really good at hiding.
Also btw forgot to add: in the jackenstein fight a seemingly random spite of a tree appears next to one of the haunted mansion mazes. I'm not sure if it means something but the exit in that specific house is false because YOU'RE TAKING TOO LONG appears there and chases you to the true one. Since another house most likely teases the future somehow (it has little sprites of chess pieces, a sword, and a flower, seemingly pretty random in a freaking haunted mansion) maybe the tree one also teases something?
TL;DR: what if the poor lost children are Kris, Asriel, Noelle and Dess. Noelle recalled them exploring the town. What if as a result of their childish carelessness (and them following something strange (most likely the pointed tail)) Dess got trapped in the bunker. The children dealt with the trauma in different ways: Kris took therapy sessions, Asriel went to college and Noelle supressed her trauma.
Overall I wanted to say that the theory doesn't have 0 evidence and it all seems kind of connected. I am sorry if my English is not the best (I'm not really used to the essay format), but what do you think about all of this? I really want to hear your thoughts.
(Also I wanted to post this on Reddit but I don't have enough of that stupid post karma)
