How to extract first line of message from Winlogbeat

Badger, I finally understood what you were saying and it works perfect, thanks for helping me out. I've searched through the forums and read through the documentation and nowhere did I come across anything that refers to a literal return.

Here is my final filter:

filter {

  mutate {
    copy => { "message" => "message_head" }
  }

  mutate {
    split => ["message_head", "
"]}

  mutate {
    replace => { "message_head" => "%{message_head[0]}" }
  }

}

And a sample result:
"message_head": "An account was logged off."