I seem to remember that last/next/redo are implemented as edge cases of goto LABEL.

Provided the target label is set it's possible to goto out of a sub into a scope in the dynamic caller chain. (One use case is to short circuit leaving a recursion, without needing to step thru hundreds of returns*)

So this behavior doesn't surprise me. (Though I would have expected to see a label)

My bet is the documentation is wrong or badly worded or at least outdated.

update

*) demo

use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.12.0;


sub count_down {
   my ($a)=@_;
   say --$a;
   goto EXIT unless $a;
   count_down($a)
}


count_down(10);

say "never reached";

EXIT:
say "byebye";
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9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
byebye
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