Bricked rt-ac86u

just got my hands on this bricked rt-ac86u. Power led is on, lan port that has the cable plugged in flashes periodically.
No ping returns with a static ip. I put it into recovery mode and try to use the Asus firmware restoration tool, find it doesn’t even see the firmware, maybe because it’s not a trx file.
So I check the Asus download section and see there is a newer utility which I install. Now I can select the firmware and when I hit upload, I get a message that it isn’t an Asus firmware...

Bricked rt-ac86u