A1370 2011 MacBook Air Flashing Question mark, no Recovery or Boot

So I know the question mark folder thing has been beaten to death, but I haven't found a forum relating to my issue. It's a Mid-2011 Macbook Air Core i5. One day it stopped booting up and gave me the blank white screen. After about 60 seconds, the blinking folder with a question mark comes on.

Great, no problem. I've tried to boot in recovery mode, I've tried to boot in safe mode, I've tried to reset everything, I created a boot drive with an external drive from my other mac, however when I boot up while holding the option key, nothing comes up. I have absolutely no option to try to boot from the external drive. I even took out the SSD thinking it was still searching there while keeping the external boot drive plugged in, and still, nothing, only a blinking folder with a question mark.

What could this be? I figure even if the SSD or ribbon connecter were fried (likely), I should still be able to boot from the external with the SSD pulled out, right?

Any help you guys can give would be immensely appreciated. Thanks!