writeContract appears to just be sending ether instead of calling contract

[SaulMoonves]

package.json:

    "@web3modal/ethers": "^4.0.13",
    "@web3modal/wagmi": "^4.0.13",

page:

const mint = useCallback(() => {
    writeContract({
      address,
      abi,
      functionName: "mint",
      args: [
        tokenId
      ],
      value: price ?? BigInt(0),
    });
  }, [tokenId, price]);

ABI:

  {
    "inputs": [
      {
        "internalType": "uint256",
        "name": "_tokenId",
        "type": "uint256"
      }
    ],
    "name": "mint",
    "outputs": [],
    "stateMutability": "payable",
    "type": "function"
  },

metamask:

hardhat node:

eth_sendRawTransaction
  Transaction:         0xa9d226ba76c7d7c414da576fc92e051f1a4db04dc05dd2dce50322835a5d860e
  From:                0xf39fd6e51aad88f6f4ce6ab8827279cfffb92266
  To:                  0xe7f1725e7734ce288f8367e1bb143e90bb3f0512
  Value:               0.1 ETH
  Gas used:            21204 of 21205
  Block #3:            0x67e0d3079405aae43897688af05ecbfc33e78ca8857b3ca992a41098f1a0eda5

The contract doesn't even exist yet, I haven't deployed it, to test what happens. It appears that writeContract is just sending ETH to the address, no error received.

What am I doing wrong?

[SaulMoonves]

I added logging to wagmi and viem and it appears that it's doing an eth_call with the transaction data??? how is this even possible